Jerry Brown and the Rose Bird factor

03.02.10 - 1:09 pm | Tim Redmond |

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Jerry Brown hadn’t even formally announced that he was running for governor when the San Francisco Chronicle brought up the name of Rose Bird.

It’s fine to talk about where Brown is vulnerable, and there’s no shortage of material. The guy has a long public record; anyone who served two terms as governor in the 1970s and early 1980s, and two terms as mayor of Oakland, and one term as chair of the state Democratic Party, and did a couple of years as a KPFA talk show host, is going to have baggage. He’s also got a wealth of experience.

But the Rose Bird stuff is a cheap shot.

Here’s how the Chron describes it:

Rose Bird: As governor, Brown appointed Bird to be chief justice of the state Supreme Court. After she invalidated the death sentence of every case she reviewed, voters in 1986 made her and two others the first judges unseated from the court. To voters older than 45, Bird's name is shorthand for "liberal judges."

Actually, voters ousted her after a savage campaign funded by big business interests who were mad at her pro-labor and pro-free speech rulings. The death penalty was their weapon, and even then it was pretty bogus: The Bird Court consistently upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty.

But in the early 1980s, death-penalty law was unsettled in the United States; the U.S. Supreme Court had in 1977 ruled that executions were legal in America, but set strict standards for states to follow. Most states were struggling to sort out what the ruling meant and to figure out how to comply. By 1986, when Bird was under assault, 38 states had adopted death-penalty laws, but only 13 had actually executed anyone. In conservative states like Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, judges were trying to determine if the laws fit the Supreme Court’s standards -- essentially what the Bird Court was doing in California.

And in California, the death-penalty statute had been written by John Briggs, the guy who wanted to keep gay people from teaching in the schools. The Briggs law was, by all accounts, poorly drafted, unclear and convoluted, and applying it under the federal standard was a challenge.

In other words, as we wrote at the time (In Defense of Rose Bird, Sept. 3, 1986):

The charge that the Bird court has refused to enforce the death penalty is simply inaccurate ... the California Supreme Court has simply been doing what most state and federal courts have done over the past ten years: carefully scrutinizing death sentences to ensure that they are valid under the federal and state constitutions and complex and ever-changing standards of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The real issue didn’t make the press. Again, from our cover story at the time:

For nine years, the California Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Bird, has led the nation in advancing the causes of free speech, civil liberties, environmental protection and the rights of tenants, senior citizens, women, minorities and organized labor.

Big-business interests organized and funded a massive campaign to get rid of Bird -- not because of the death penalty but for purely economic reasons.

The Chronicle got it wrong back then, and is getting it wrong again today.

Comments

You have to be a million years old to remember this!

Well, my age or older, anyway, and I'm older than 45.

Most voters are just going to go "wow, what a pretty name."

Posted by Caroline on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 2:21 pm

Caroline, I don't remember

Caroline,

I don't remember her either.

But the median age of a voter is 50.

Old folks may be losing their short-term memory, but they remember stuff from decades ago as if it was yesterday.

Posted by Tom Foolery on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 3:57 pm

Anyone but Moonbeam and Lord of the Med Flies

I voted to remove that progressive Judge and all three of the other judges Jerry "moonbeam" "lord of the medflies" Brown appointed. He was a really Govenor then and he will be a rubber stamp for the senate and assembly who hasn't learned to live in their means and cut spending. We need lower taxes to encourage businesses and individuals to stay in california, not make them flee the state.

Posted by Dirty Harry on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 4:51 pm

Selective Memory

I am sure that California's death penalty law was not perfectly written, but there really is no evidence that Rose Bird had any interest in fixing it. Instead she focused on always finding some technical issue in a case that enabled the Court to send it back down to the lower court. This outraged voters who clearly saw that she was just trying to avoid enforcing a law she did not agree with.

In addition, she did ludicrous things like making a ruling that invalidated all Spanish land grants -- thereby upsetting title to vast swaths of property in CA. That ruling like many others was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court (and the over-rulings were often 9-0 and the Supremes were much more liberal then).

So while it is ideologically convenient to blame Bird's demise on Big Corporations, the fact is that she was an ideological and activist judge who was using the Supreme Court to enforce her policy preferences not the law. It is not surprising she was ousted in a landslide.

Posted by Wilson on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 5:33 pm

Rose Bird is dead -- have some class, detractors

With corporate cash poised to soak elections, no wonder you hear her name invoked--it's not about Jerry Brown, or her rulings--but the remembrance of VICTORY of a BOUGHT RECALL election.

Her name is invoked to battle, to rise and poison democracy, through money or through fear...

Posted by Guest on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 7:25 pm

rose bird and the manson family

Because of Rose Bird we now have been paying to feed and house the Manson family. And as a bonus we get to go through the parole process every few years too. Because of Jerry Brown we got Rose Bird......I do remember him and would NEVER vote for him. EVER!!

ANYBODY BUT JERRY BROWN

Posted by Guest on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 7:33 pm

Death penalty proponents do not have a moral leg to stand on.

Nor do they have a factual leg.

For those who think that execution saves money over life imprisonment, let's take a minute to work through some numbers.

Nationally, the average death row inmate's age at arrest is 28. Assume it takes one year from time of arrest to be sentenced to death, making them 29.

Nationally, the average length of time to execution is 13 years. California pays an extra $90,000 per year over the cost of life imprisonment to keep an inmate on death row. Over 13 years, California will pay an extra $1.2 million to imprison an inmate on death row.

In 2008, the average cost of imprisoning an inmate for one year was $36,000. (This figure is somewhat inflated because it includes the death row population.) Giving you the benefit of the doubt, though, the average lifer would have to be imprisoned for 33 years -- or 20 years longer than the average death row prisoner -- before their imprisonment is a net cost to California compared to the death penalty. In other words, if a statistically average lifer and death row inmate were arrested at the same age, the lifer would have to live to the age of 61 before their imprisonment cost California more than the death row inmate's imprisonment and execution.

However, serving 20 years in prison takes 16 years off a prisoner's life expectancy. In other words, if a life prisoner arrested at 28 (the same age as average death row inmate) lives to 48, their life expectancy decreases to 61 (16 years subtracted from the national average of 77). Assuming that this relationship is constant (.8 years decrease in life expectancy for every year spent in prison), we would expect the average life prisoner to die at 55.

In short, it may offend you that "we are still paying to feed and house the Manson family." However, death row, as a whole, costs California more than life imprisonment. The plural of anecdote is not data.

Sources:
http://www.nicic.org/Features/StateStats/?State=CA
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/time-death-row
http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/1010/1010lect07b.htm

Posted by Guest on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 9:38 pm

Ancient history

Why does anyone care about an election which was 1/4 of a century ago? Brown is too old to be governor but sadly for the CA Democratic party he's all we've got to offer.

And Tim - CA was a different state back then - whiter, more conservative and more Republican. Times have changed.

This stuff is so in the past. It's stupid of the Chronicle to bring it up and even dumber of the Guardian to take the bait - like they always do. The Chron says "jump" and the Guardian says "how high?"

Posted by Lucretia the Trollop on Mar. 02, 2010 @ 11:23 pm

I'm no opponent of the death

I'm no opponent of the death penalty from a moral or philosophical position. I have assisted in the placement of several persons on Death Row, during my work as a homicide detective.

The idea of executions being more cost-effective than housing a state prisoner is ludicrous. The text above describing the "diminishing return" cycle of Life Sentence Vs. Death Row is only a small percentage of the costs involved in strapping someone onto the gurney. Also add the trial costs and attorney fees involved in the lengthy and tortuous appeals process involved in finally getting the inmate to the point of death warrant--and I dare say that same inmate could likely be housed for hundreds of years on the money it takes just to get him to that point.

So, from a pure cash-flow point of view, the death penalty is an egregiously expensive luxury. I think a more salient question on this issue is NOT whether the State is or isn't morally sound when executing a mad-dog killer.......but rather, is this EXTREMELY expensive process something that has priced itself out of affordability. I believe it has. With the ability to lock away the Charles Mansons and similar predators for life--no parole possible, just an appeals process that safeguards the rights of the accused--the time has come to cease this Kafka-esque kabuki theater.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 22, 2010 @ 7:36 pm

Jerry Brown what a Joke

People care because Jerry Brown is a crooked and has sunk California when he was appointed as Governor. If California should have impeached anyone it should have been Brown. When he was Mayor of Oakland, he tried to shut down schools. He tries to come back 20 years later and pretend that all that is water under the bridge. California is already ready to sink, and the last thing that we need is someone that doesn't know what they're doing. He figures 20 years later, there is a new generation of voters that don't remember his antics and moronic decisions... And peole stating who cares, are the targets. The fact that he is running just means that he has bigger balls than he has brains. Anyone that votes for him must be a lefty looney and doesn't do their research from when he tried to sink California in the past.

Posted by Guest on Aug. 23, 2010 @ 9:41 am